The race of prime donne is proverbially a capricious one; the profession of an impresario one of the most trying which can fall to the lot of man. Yet, it may be doubted whether any queen of song since opera was invented can have occasioned her managers anything approaching the anxiety and annoyance caused by Mlle. Sophie Arnould. She knew she was necessary, well-nigh indispensable, and she abused her position. Dearly did the administration pay for the increased receipts which her popularity brought them. Every day she had some new grievance, some unexpected whim. She wished to sing and she did not wish to sing, she retired and she reappeared. Sometimes she would create a part in an opera, sing divinely to crowded houses for three or four nights, then suddenly discover that it was unsuited to her or made too great demands upon her strength, and insist upon another singer taking her place for the remainder of the run of the piece. A few evenings later, jealous perhaps of the applause which her successor was receiving, she would come down to the theatre and announce her intention of resuming her part, only to throw it up again so soon as she considered that she had asserted her superiority. To revive an opera in which she had scored a success was often as risky a venture as to produce a new one, since it might, and very often did, happen, that Mlle. Arnould--who, it should be mentioned, unlike the majority of public performers, cared very little for applause--would be indisposed, that is to say, indisposed to exert her full powers, with the result that the once popular piece would be received in comparative silence. In February 1769, _Dardanus_ was revived. Iphise, the heroine, was one of Sophie’s greatest rôles, but on the first night she either could not or would not sing, and the opera became, in consequence, “almost a burlesque.” It is only, however, fair to say that she made ample atonement on the following evening. Thinking perhaps, as one of her biographers suggests, that any one was good enough to sing with a voiceless prima donna, the management entrusted the part of Dardanus to a new tenor named Muguet, “who had neither voice, figure, nor expression.” The audience not unnaturally resented the experiment, and M. Muguet and the opera with him were in a fair way to be hissed off the stage, when Sophie came to the rescue and, by superb singing and impassioned acting, restored the house to good humour and converted a complete failure into something approaching a success.